How this content is maintained

Last verified 2026-09-30

This page is about how the site gets made: how a page comes to say what it says, where AI tools help along the way, who checks the result, and what the date at the top of every page means.

The short version

• Every claim traces back to a primary source, linked at the foot of the page it appears on. If the sources don’t say it, the page doesn’t either.
• AI tools help find, read, draft and check. They work directly on this site’s own files, so the sources they read are the ones listed on the page.
• A person reads every page from start to finish before it goes live, checking each number, date and quoted passage against the source itself, not against the draft.
• Every page carries a “Last verified” date, the day a person last checked it against its sources, and pages get re-checked on a cycle.
• Nothing is generated in bulk, and corrections from readers are reviewed by a person and reflected in the page where deemed accurate.

Where the words come from

The work starts with sources, not with a blank page. For any question this site answers, the first job is finding who actually owns the answer: the scheme operator, the retailer writing about its own collection bins, the state environment agency, the fire service, the ACCC, the manufacturer. We read what they publish, all of it, and reflect what it says on our site. Links to the sources of content on a page are included at the bottom of the page.

Three rules follow from that.

• Safety guidance is quoted and credited, never made up here. Where the NSW EPA or a fire service is specific, we keep their wording.
• All content is regularly reviewed for accuracy against the real sources. That goes for every phone number, date and dollar figure as much as for the prose: each one is read off the source itself, not off the draft. An early draft of one page gave the NSW EPA’s Environment Line as 131 555. It’s 131 500. We caught it by re-reading the number on the EPA’s own page.
• If something can no longer be verified, it comes out. When a claim that was accurate before can’t be confirmed against its source any more, it’s removed as soon as we become aware of it. A page that says less, and can show where each thing came from, is worth more than one that says more.

Where AI tools are used, and where they aren’t

What they’re used for. Searching for sources and fetching them. Reading long documents (legislation, scheme terms, retailer policies) and pulling out the passages that matter. Drafting pages, and checking a draft against its own sources for claims the sources don’t support. That last one is the step that catches the confident sentence nobody had a source for. An early draft of one page described what the collection unit in a supermarket looks like. No source described it, so it came out. The same tools will run the scheduled re-checks described below.

What they’re not used for. Deciding what gets published. And they’re not used to produce volume. This is a small site, and each page exists because people actually ask the question. There are no pages generated per suburb, council or product to catch searches, and no drop-off locations copied out of the operators’ locators. The “near me” step is handed to their live tools instead.

Why use them at all. This site is one person, and whether it’s any use rests entirely on reading a lot of primary sources carefully and re-reading them on a schedule, because they change without warning. That’s the part of the job a machine does without getting tired, and it’s the part most sites skip.

What they’re bad at. A drafting tool reaches for confident, complete-sounding phrasing the source doesn’t support, and it can produce a specific-looking number, name or date that’s simply wrong. Every check on this page exists because of that.

The human step

Before a page goes live, a person reads it start to finish and checks it against its sources: every quoted passage against the passage it came from, every number against the number on the source. That person is the publisher, Lithium Systems, described on the About page. It’s a sourcing check, not an expert’s sign-off. This site’s credibility rests on where its content came from, not on who wrote it, and it says so.

The same person reads corrections, decides what changes after publication, and signs off every re-check. No page on this site is published or updated without being thoroughly reviewed by a real person.

What “Last verified” means

The date at the top of each page is the last day a person checked that page, in full, against the sources listed at the bottom. It isn’t the date the page was written, and it isn’t the date it was last touched. A typo can be fixed without the date moving. It only moves when the whole page has been checked.

How often. The target is at least every three months for anything regulatory (scheme rules, what a retailer accepts, legislation and its dates) and at least every six months for everything else. If a page’s date is older than that, the page is overdue, and you should weigh it accordingly. The date is at the top so you can make that call without taking our word for anything.

What a re-check involves. Each source gets fetched again and compared with what the page says now. If the source has changed, moved or vanished, the page changes and the date changes with it. If nothing has changed, the date still moves, because the check was done.

When we get it wrong

We will, sometimes. Sources change between checks. An operator changes what it accepts and tells nobody. A draft carries a sentence the source didn’t quite support and the read-through misses it. Two things hold regardless.

• The operator or authority named on the page is the source of truth. If they tell you something different from what you read here, follow them. The terms of use say the same. And please tell us.
• Corrections change the page. Email [email protected] with the page and, if you have it, the source showing the right answer. A person reads it, checks it against the source like everything else, and the page and its date get updated. Your name isn’t published without asking you first; the privacy page covers that.

What this site won’t do

• Publish a claim without a source.
• Publish a page nobody has read.
• Generate pages to catch searches. No per-suburb or per-council pages, no topic written because it’s trending rather than because people ask.
• Copy drop-off data out of the operators’ locators. We link to the live tools instead.
• Hide a commercial relationship. There are none today. If any appear, they’ll be labelled near the top of the page carrying them, as the terms of use already promise.

Why this page exists

Google’s guidance for publishers asks whether “the use of automation, including AI-generation, [is] self-evident to visitors through disclosures or in other ways”, whether the publisher is “providing background about how automation or AI-generation was used to create content”, and whether it’s “explaining why automation or AI was seen as useful to produce content”. The same guidance draws its line at using automation “to produce content for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings”. This page is the direct answer to those questions, and the site’s purpose is the one at the top of the About page: to tell you what to do with a lithium battery you no longer want.